Reading Addis Ababa
Intoduction
Reading Addis Ababa” is an ongoing research that aims to document, analyze and understand the urban form of Addis Ababa. Further, the research intends to produce a basic document that could be of use to policy makers, academicians, and practitioners. Particularly, practitioners such as architects and planners could use the document in making informed interventions that respond both to the historical and current situation of an urban tissue. The term “tissue” is here used to denote an interwoven spatial segment of a city. The method of analysis for Reading Addis Ababa was developed to respond to the realities of the cities of les industrialized countries. In cities of industrialized countries the divide between rural and urban is more or less a clear dichotomy – you have either a “pure” city or a “pure” rural. In cities of less industrialized countries, on the other hand, the dichotomy is rather non-xistent. Instead of a dichotomy we have an interface – a shade between rural and urban; between tradition and modernity. It is not a matter of either – or; it is rather both – and. It is from this interface the method seeks to develop an initial outline through which we can understand and read our cities – an outline upon which we can base our future interventions. The study of the interface in the here and now is investigated through synchronic analysis – a snap shot of a space and its activities as it happens now. But to understand the spatial logic of an area, a snap shot is not enough, we have to also go back in history and make a diachronic analysis – a chronological sequence of activities. Here we are not interested in historicity per se, as an urban historian would be. We are rather interested in selective investigation of history – a filtered investigation, picking happenings as far as they are relevant to the understanding of the spatial logic.